AuthorTopic: The Sprue Lagoon: Gundams and more! (Read 7282 times)

When most people think of a collection of vehicles from the mid 1950’s, they think of T-Birds, or Tri-Chevies or at least something with fins. Barring that, at least most people think of something with four wheels! However, I am not most people. For me, while they’re visually interesting and neat in real life, cars of the Fifties have never really “done it” for me as modelling subjects.

No, I like the weirder stuff, so when I got a collection of vehicles from the mid-‘50s, it was a bunch of Japanese three-wheeled commercial vehicles! Thanks to LS (and Arii thereafter), my lust for oddball automotive subjects can be at least somewhat appeased! Check out my collection of 5 three-wheelers from the fun and simple 1/32 “Owner’s Club” model series. You’ll never see a Big Wheel the same way again!

Despite building them very rarely, I really do like space ships. On one hand, they really let you use your imagination, since they’re not real. On the other, most ships of which there are kits are so famous that to paint them in other than their “accepted” schemes can often be considered akin to heresey! I’ve always wanted to build my “own” ship, with its own back story. However, I’m not up for that kind of scratchbuilding, so that left me high and dry.

That was until I came across the Wave kit of the Solvalou, a non-scale kit of the main fighter from the video game Xevious. Since I’m no gamer, and never was, I had no connection to the ship, nor did I have any preconceived notions about how it should look, scale or anything else. So, I finally had a chance to get imaginative!I had great fun paying tribute to my two favourite books, the Usborne Book of the Future and the original TTA Book (Spacecraft 2000-2100AD) with this little model, which turned out to be a great kit!

Check out my personal addition to the TTA universe at the link below, and let me know what you think!

When it comes to the Automotive Dark Ages, there are a few certainties you can almost always rely on. One of those is that it was a bad time to be a storied nameplate, because the chances of you surviving with your name intact was pretty much nil. That’s why I love that era, from about 1973 to about 1987 so much; the cars in it were so lacklustre and neutered that people can’t help but want to forget them.

One good example is the Nova. While most people will choose to remember the late ‘60s and early ‘70s muscle-era pocket rockets, the truth is the Nova died a long and slow death, wasting away until replaced by the exciting, modern and much-ballyhooed Citation! (Nevermind it’s resurrection as a badge engineered Corolla…) For me, the thrill isn’t the early Novas that everyone remembers. Nope, it’s the cruddy, wheezy late models, the shadows of their former selves, that turns my crank.

For that reason, I was very excited to finally be able to get my hands on a copy of Round 2’s version of the MPC 1979 Nova – Squad Rod! As if the last Nova wasn’t sad enough, the MPC attempt to create a Police Hot Rod is just, well… disquieting. Check out this loserly last stand at the link below!

Sometimes you get it… sometimes you don’t. We’ve all had off days, but it’s one thing to mess up on a model, and another to mess up creating the actual subject in real life! Well, despite their success with the Schneider Trophy races and the immortality of the Spitfire, it seems that, after WWII, the good folks at Supermarine just kind of threw in the towel. They went from creating some of the world’s fastest aircraft to creating one of the slower, more lacklustre and undeniably more porcine jets.

Early jets, of course, weren’t all successes, but the straight-winged, tail dragging, chubby-boddied Attacker is one of the most prevalent losers of the immediate post-war jet cohort. Of course, because it’s such a substandard loser, I love it! It’s not just loser cars that get me going, total failures of aeronautics also make me smile! That’s why I was glad to get my hands on the Trumpeter Attacker! At the time, there was no good 1/72, so I was even willing to go up a scale and out of my normal comfort zone to build one!

Check out the 1/48 Trumpeter Attacker at the link below, and let me know what you think!

When I started my model site, The Sprue Lagoon, I didn’t really know what it was going to be like, or how long I’d stay at it. As a result of the site, though, I’ve managed to make all kinds of new connections, and it’s really become an important part of how I model. I take great pride in finding and reviewing both interesting, and completely oddball, subjects. One thing I’ve found since I started it back in 2012 is that I now often think “Would that be a fun kit to review?” before I even think of “Would that be a fun kit to build?” I have changed the way I think to try and take what everybody out there in “internet land” might like to see or find interesting.

As it turns out, this has led me down a number of interesting roads, and continues to do so. Seven years after starting the website, I have reached a milestone I didn’t even think was possible – 250,000 hits. That’s big for a site just made by one dude and his model stash, I think. I wanted to have a bit of a celebration for it; do something special, something a bit bigger than usual.

Well, thankfully, I found just the thing! A couple of years ago, I managed to get my hands on what is still the biggest car kit in my inventory, a 1/16 Street Van called “Movin’ Out”. It is a wild, wild “big rig show van” in the most overdone tradition of both the late ‘70s Vannin’ craze, AND the late ‘70s taste for humungous pieces of styrene!

I thought that it would be a fitting thing to present at this milestone occasion; a big review of a big kit on a big day. Check it out at the link below.

Thanks, to everybody, who’s helped make my site successful, and has made my modelling far more fun and interesting than I’d have ever thought possible. Just like this van, you all rock!